Darn it, I have to admit defeat over a poxy i845 chipset motherboard with 'issues'
My diagnostics on the board, including a POST test card suggest a corrupted BIOS as the checksum is appearing to be incorrect. The bios image is not available and replacement PICMG boards are silly expensive due to their Industrial heritage. The IB800S is actually half decent as far as P4 boards go. She contains lots of connectivity and ATI on board GPU. Sadly most alternatives are lacking in the GPU department but that was not a reall issue if I am honest.
If this was the embedded computer in a thermal camera, I would not give up so easily. It is just that PC motherboards have never interested me very much as far as repair goes. They are norm ally so cheap to replace so not worth the diagnostic and repair time. The IB800S is a little different as I really wanyed to get the Dolch Flex PAC running again.
Right so I am not willing to pay £200+ for a known good IB800S SBC, the alternatives remain expensive and would need modifications to the Flex PAC and that is still taking the easy way out
I suspect the BIOS may be corrupted and I am no expert on BIOS code but I can do "bush engineering" when needed. I am considering building a test BIOS using the BIOS image of a motherboard that uses the same chipset, video, I/O and LAN chips
If such does not exist, I will do the best I can. I need to prove whether the original BIOS is the cause of the problem, or it just appears that way due to another failure elsewhere on the motherboard. I have the required programmer and the flash chips are cheap. I just need tonsearch out a similar spec motherboard and use its OEM BIOS image. I could just buy a similar chipset standard used motherboard off eBay as well as some are only £10 ! I getva pre programmed BIOS chip that way
If I prove theoriginal BIOS is the failure I will see whether a new IB800S bios can be created using the donor BIOS. Not guarantee of success but at leSt I am not giving up before a fight eh
This will all take time and I have no great need to do this now so I will look for a suitable donor BIOS or Motherboard and report if I ever get the Flex PAC running.
Fraser